Preparation for My Big Adventure with Ed and Arlene

Austin Travel Blog

In honor of my parents' (Ed and Arlene) 50th Anniversary, I took them on a trip to New Zealand. My parents live in Wyoming and have traveled fairly extensively in the US, Canada, Mexico and Caribbean, as well as some in Europe. They had never been south of the equator and were very excited about the prospect of going down under when I told them of my plans. I have spent quite a bit of time in New Zealand previously, as the company I worked for had an office there, so I was pretty familiar with places to take my parents. I used frequent flier miles to get us down there, so we were a bit at the mercy of the airlines about when we could go. It took me about two months of calling the airlines to finally get us coordinated tickets so that we could meet in Los Angles and then head to New Zealand. As it turned out, the only way we could get there was to go through Tahiti and spend a couple of nights there! What torture, ha ha! I had always wanted to see Tahiti, and here was my chance!

I flew on American Airlines from Austin direct to Los Angeles. My flight left Austin at 7:30am. I was so excited about going that I got almost no sleep the night before -- I couldn't wait to show my parents around NZ!